The generic medicines sector provides most prescription medicines in Europe, helping patients and healthcare professionals manage some of the most challenging health conditions, virtually across all therapy areas. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic showcased the essential role that off-patent medicines play in a large public health crisis.

As recently highlighted in the Pharmaceutical Strategy, tender reforms, pricing and reimbursement reforms and greater use of generic medicines are essential to ensure patients can access the medicines they need and to enhance healthcare sustainability. This demonstrates that generic medicines provide an outstanding opportunity to improve patient access to safe and effective medicines. However, to fully realise this potential, effective and comprehensive generic medicines policies are required.

The ‘2020 generic market review’ provides a comprehensive overview of generic medicine policies in 22 European countries covering eight main topics: pricing systems, control of excessive spending, retail tendering, hospital tendering, reimbursement systems, physician incentives, pharmacist incentives and patient incentives.

Medicines for Europe Director General Adrian van den Hoven commented “The report clearly shows the need for pricing and reimbursement and procurement reforms in order to expand patient access, promote sustainable uptake of generic medicines and increase security of supply. Unsustainable medicines policies, like unpredictable clawback policies and price cuts, have to be avoided at all cost”

The 2020 Generic market review can be accessed here.